USCA Sonnet 76
The story of USCA Winery began some 15 years ago when a group of friends, fascinated by the world of wine, decided to open their own winery. Leaving behind their “city” lives and careers they moved to the Izmir district of Urla and in 2003 established their vineyards.
Turkish bureaucracy is much like a vineyard…tangled, a bit dirty, and requiring a lot of patience. It was not until 2007 that USCA Winery was incorporated but the ensuing years gave the vineyards time to mature.
If this wine is any indication though, that patience has paid off in spades.
USCA Sonnet 76 2013
Sonnet 76 (the wine, not the verse from the Bard) is a blend of 80% Cabernet Sauvignon and 20% Merlot. The 18 months this wine spent in French oak is apparent in the forest fruits, vanilla, and baking spices on the nose. While I liked the nose I was also thinking: ugh, another high alcohol (14%!) sweet-smelling Bordeaux blend. So I was unprepared for the flavors.
Not that there was a huge chasm of difference between the aromas and flavors. But on the palate the sweet spices were more of a subtle backdrop to the balance of punchy acid, mineral, and a savory/umami character.
A limited bottling (we had bottle 1,123 out of 4,000) this wine is as rare and as special the Bard’s verses to which USCA matches their wines. And I can think of no better way to conclude this post with Shakespeare’s Sonnet 76:
So are you to my thoughts as food to life,
Or as sweet-season’d showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As ‘twixt a miser and his wealth is found.
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure;
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then better’d that the world may see my pleasure:
Sometime all full with feasting on your sight,
And by and by clean starved for a look;
Possessing or pursuing no delight
Save what is had, or must from you be took.
Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.